And then they heard the sirens, dozens of them, shrieking in the distance and coming fast. Over the crest they saw Cosway’s Town Car in the lead followed by FBI vehicles and state police cruisers.
Glash threw the maroon van into drive and roared toward Cosway’s car.
‘What’s he doing?’ Hobbs groaned. ‘He’s heading straight toward them!’
Barrett couldn’t pull her eyes from the horror as the van’s engine raced. ‘George … no!’ she screamed as Glash rammed Cosway’s black Lincoln. Tears welled as she saw Houssman’s head yank forward on impact.
Hobbs was running toward them. But Glash was faster; he’d jumped from the van and pumped two bullets, execution-style, into Cosway’s driver. Then, just as he’d done with Houssman, he put a gun to Cosway’s head and ordered the stunned man out. Cosway was trying to say something. But Glash drew back his arm and viciously slammed the gun against the side of his head. Cosway slumped. Glash grabbed him before he could fall and threw him into the back of the van. As he did, Barrett could see that something, or someone, was dumped out of the back and on to the ground. Ed was closing on them. ‘No,’ she sobbed, too frightened to move.
It happened in seconds. By the time Hobbs was close enough to fire, Glash was back in the driver’s seat. She wondered if the van might be too damaged too drive – Glash always had a plan B. What would he do? Who would he kill? With its headlights smashed and the hood crumpled she heard the van’s engine come to life, and leaving deep ruts in the grass, it raced away from the oncoming cavalcade of law enforcement.
‘We have to go after him,’ Barrett shouted, looking around as marked and unmarked vehicles swarmed past them in pursuit of Glash. Overhead, a helicopter roared over the crest and dove in the direction of Glash’s fleeing vehicle. Clouds of dust swirled around them. Sirens blared.
Barrett caught sight of Carla Phelps lying on the ground, curled in the fetal position, her arms and legs still bound; she wasn’t moving, and as the armada of vehicles raced over the grounds all she could think was that they couldn’t see Carla.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she murmured, hobbling up the sloping hill toward her, praying she wouldn’t get hit herself.
‘Barrett, wait!’ Hobbs shouted. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed.’ He swallowed dust and coughed as he ran after her. He saw the blood on her shoulder. ‘You’re injured.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, as they came to Carla’s body.
Hobbs bent down.
‘Is she dead?’ Barrett asked.
Hobbs put a finger to her carotid; as he did she coughed, her body convulsed and she opened her bruised eyes to stare up at Hobbs and then Barrett.
‘Thank God.’ Barrett sank to her knees.
‘Did they get him?’ Carla asked, through hooded eyes. ‘Did they kill the bastard?’
‘No,’ Barrett said, ‘he got away … he’s taken hostages. He took George Houssman.’ She stared off in the direction of the fleeing vehicles. The helicopter still barely visible. ‘There’s no way he’ll get away. I just hope …’
Hobbs pulled out a pocketknife and cut through the plastic restraints, freeing Barrett’s hands and then Carla’s. ‘What happened to your shoulder?’ he asked Barrett.
‘It was bad,’ she admitted, ‘but the bleeding stopped.’ She rubbed her red-ringed wrists, and then looked at Hobbs. If it wasn’t for him, she’d probably be dead right now. ‘Thank you,’ she said, looking at his scarred face. He’d once again put himself in harm’s way to save her. He was good, a man who’d literally walk through fire for her, so why didn’t she feel the same? She kept her thoughts to herself as she and Hobbs worked away at the dense mass of duct tape around Carla’s legs.
‘Now what?’ Hobbs asked, as a black Taurus stopped next to his smashed-up Crown Vic.
‘We should go after him,’ Barrett said. ‘This isn’t going to end well. Maybe I could reason with him.’
He shook his head. ‘He’s got two hostages and a couple dozen vehicles with air support in pursuit. Unless we can bring something special to that party, we’d just make things worse.’
‘George …’ she said, hearing the sirens fading in the distance.
‘He’s tough,’ Hobbs said, helping Carla to stand. ‘I saw a couple teams of FBI negotiators who just went by. They’re not bad … at least, they’re competent.’
‘He was Glash’s foster father for a brief time,’ Barrett said. ‘Glash hates him for not having kept him.’
‘He told me,’ Hobbs said, as the trio hobbled back toward their car and the parked Taurus. The driver’s door clicked open and the sole black-suited occupant got out.
‘Great!’ Hobbs muttered as Cosway’s second in command – Corbin Zane – approached; he was carrying a cell, and had a small speaker hooked to his right ear.
‘Shouldn’t you be off trying to rescue your boss?’ Hobbs called out, as Zane approached.
‘I can hear everything that’s going on.’ The ex-linebacker was sweating buckets. ‘Dr Conyors,’ he said, his tone polite, ‘I’m glad to see you’re safe.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘And you too, Ms Phelps,’ he said, looking at the attorney.
Zane suddenly tensed, put a hand to the receiver in his ear. ‘You’ve got to be shitting me! So where is he?’ His face turned bright red. ‘Yes, get dogs, get more air support.’
Hobbs’s jaw dropped, he looked up at Zane. ‘He got away!’
‘They found the van,’ Zane said, ‘and another body.’
‘Oh no,’ Barrett said. ‘Please tell me it wasn’t Dr Houssman.’
‘No. It was a woman in her thirties, her ID is gone. She was getting gas. He slit her throat, grabbed her purse and keys, took her car.’
‘No one saw?’ Hobbs sputtered. ‘What about the hostages?’
‘Gone,’ Zane said, clearly shaken. ‘The gas station has security video; they’re checking it now.’ He looked at Barrett. ‘He just killed somebody as though it were nothing.’
‘Listen,’ Barrett said, desperate that he’d gotten away again, ‘you need to know that he’s carrying around quarts of what he believes to be deadly plague bacteria. He said he’s going to contaminate the Ashokan Reservoir.’
‘He told you this?’ Zane asked.
‘Yes, for the last forty-eight hours he’s been telling me his life story. He wants me to write a book about him. He wants to be famous. That’s why he didn’t kill me. I was of use to him.’ She pictured George Houssman and prayed that Glash had some use for him. If not, she knew he was as good as dead.
‘The bacteria; you saw them?’
‘I saw something in two big glass bottles. I also saw the vials he took from Bioforward.’
Zane stared at her. ‘You’ve got to be shitting me. They said nothing was taken.’
‘I don’t think Glash lied to me. I was tied up in the van when he broke into Bioforward. He showed me two small glass ampoules. I have no way of knowing what was in them, but they were covered with frost, like they’d just been taken from some freezer. It had to have been eighty degrees that night – that ice came from somewhere.’
‘Holy shit!’ Zane exclaimed. ‘Ashokan is the major water supply to New York City.’ He pulled out his cell and dialed, he stepped away from Barrett and Hobbs, but they could easily overhear. ‘We’ve got a worst-case scenario on our hands,’ he said excitedly. ‘Yes … I don’t know. Yes, we have confirmation that he believes he is in possession of resistant plague … Yes, I realize that the Bioforward Corporation has stated that nothing was missing. But they lied! I’m telling you we have confirmation that something was in fact taken. This is not a drill. I repeat – this is not a drill.’
Twenty-One
Glash keeps the speedometer at eight miles above the speed limit in his newest vehicle – a gold Volkswagen Passat. He killed its previous owner and took her purse. Before he slit her throat he ripped a gold locket from her neck – Mary will like that. She liked the ring; men should give
women jewelry. Now, he has a little time; he assumes the gas station had Closed Circuit TV, but all he needs is twenty-two minutes. He must remember to wipe off the blood from the chain before giving Mary the necklace.
He glances at George Houssman curled in the seat to his left, his hands tied with a black nylon restraint. He’s too old now, he thinks. He sees the bruises on Houssman’s face and wonders at the extent of his wounds from the Ford crashing into the tree. ‘Why do you wear an overcoat in August?’ Glash asks, noting that Houssman’s eyelids just fluttered.
‘I’m cold,’ Houssman replies. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To the Ashokan Reservoir; we’ll arrive in approximately eight minutes and thirty-seven … six seconds.’
‘What do you intend to do there?’
‘I’m going to make people believe that I’ve contaminated the water with plague.’
‘But you’re planning something else,’ Houssman says.
‘Yes. The water is too cold and the culture would become too dilute. The probability of infecting a single person or animal in that manner approaches zero.’
‘Agreed.’ Houssman glances through the windshield. ‘What happened to the other man?’
‘He’s in the trunk,’ Glash says. ‘He’s unconscious; it’s better that way. His chances of playing tricks on me are greatly diminished.’
‘I’m awake,’ Houssman says, testing Glash’s reasoning.
‘You’re old,’ Glash replies. ‘I can kill you easily. If I hit you too hard you’ll die.’
‘That’s probably right.’ Houssman shudders and sinks into the warmth of his coat.
‘If you played a trick and tried to escape, I’d kill you whether I intended to or not.’
‘What do you intend?’ Houssman asks. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘You’re to take Dr Conyors’ place. You’ll write everything down. You will write a book about me. I like your books. I’ve read them all. You’ll illustrate it with my pictures. You can decide which ones to include.’ He turns to look at Houssman. ‘I draw very well. I remember you told me that when I was a little boy.’
Houssman’s breath is shallow. ‘Why would I write a book about this?’
Glash turns back to face the road. ‘Do not make me mad. You will do as you’re instructed.’ He silently mouths the minutes and seconds remaining. ‘Shut up now.’
As frightened as he was, George couldn’t help but search for traces of the little boy he and Delia had taken in thirty-eight years ago. Glash had lived with them for over two months before the horrific incident with the girl next door. He remembered how his daughters had been traumatized, not that they’d witnessed what had happened, but he and Delia had had to explain repeatedly how their new little brother would not be living with them after all. He’d sat on the edge of Alice’s bed, feeling her little body convulse as she cried, frightened that she too might do something which would make her lose her family. They’d begged him to bring back Richard. Stephanie, his oldest, had pleaded through a wall of tears, ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything bad. I promise. Please bring him back, Daddy. Please. Please.’ It had ripped them apart. He and Delia had explained how what Richard had done made it impossible for him to remain; he was too dangerous. It was a cruel lesson from which none of them ever recovered. He knew, on that day, his two little girls learned that love – even a parent’s love – is not unconditional.
Glancing at Glash he shuddered, and wondered what part he might have played in the man he’d become. Could this have been changed? Should we have tried harder? His daughters’ pleas were still clear, their faces raw with unbearable grief. ‘Bring him back. Daddy, please bring him back.’
Glash looked at him. ‘I’m angry with you,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Houssman replied, and gently pressed, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You were supposed to be my new family. You were supposed to be my new father.’
‘Yes.’
‘You sent me away … you never came back for me.’
‘I tried to visit,’ Houssman said, feeling the old regrets.
‘I begged you to take me out of that place. I told you I’d never do that again. You left me there!’ Tears rolled down Glash’s cheek.
‘I know,’ Houssman said, struck at the odd disconnection between Glash’s flat voice and stony face and the steady stream of tears that tracked down his cheek. His throat choked up as he remembered those horrible visits to Albomar, the children’s facility where Glash had been taken – initially to be evaluated and then later where he would be held for the next fourteen years of his life. Delia had come with him for the first visit only; she never returned. Glash had shrieked and screamed from the moment he saw them. His tantrums brought the guards, as the little boy hurled himself at Houssman. When he’d been told that he couldn’t return he’d flailed and kicked, demanding that he be taken home. He’d screamed to the point of exhaustion, shouting that Houssman was supposed to be his new father. At the last visit Glash had kicked him viciously and then clung desperately to his bleeding and bruised legs as he’d tried to leave. It had taken a team of nurses and aides to finally pry the little boy off him. After that, Glash’s psychiatrist had recommended that Houssman no longer visit. ‘He’ll never leave Albomar,’ is what he’d said, the words seared deep into George’s brain. ‘It’s for the best that he tries to forget you and your family.’
‘You said you’d try to take me home,’ Glash stated. ‘You never did. You lied to me.’
Houssman said nothing, his thoughts filled with ghosts of old dreams. The son he’d always wanted; Delia … thinking of her now, how he missed her. Those long-ago excited evenings anticipating the perfect little boy to complete their family. And he had been beautiful … at least at first. Houssman snuck a glance at the intense man who would likely kill him before this was over. He could see traces of that odd little boy, with his magical drawings and stilted speech. That first day he’d taken him home, dressed by some social worker in a navy blazer and corduroys. It was all so clear; Delia and he had dismissed the odd behavior, the lack of emotion. They’d assumed he was in shock; he’d just lost both his mother and father. As Houssman replayed the old memories the first basin of the reservoir came into view. Tall pines, sugar maples and ancient oaks surrounded the calm water, as picnicking families and small groups of hikers took advantage of the shade and the relative cool. He caught the smell of grilling meat and somewhere in the distance heard children shouting and laughing as they played.
‘This is the Ashokan Reservoir,’ Glash said dully. ‘It was completed in 1917 and involved the flooding of nine villages: West Hurley, Ashton, Glenford, Olive Bridge, Shokan, West Shokan …’
George stayed silent as Richard lectured and drove to the far end of a mostly deserted dirt parking lot.
‘… It was completed a year ahead of schedule and was considered the second most important feat of engineering of its time – the Panama Canal being the first. Eight hundred skeletons had to be removed from existing cemeteries, and the construction included a hundred and twenty-six miles of aqueducts to bring potable water to New York City.’
George looked through the windshield at a steep gorge hundreds of feet deep that was bordered on one side by a massive cement dam and High Point Mountain. A sluiceway from the reservoir created a bucolic scene at the base of the ravine, where a stream rolled over massive boulders into the distance, its waters swollen from the summer’s unusually heavy rains.
Houssman wondered at this choice of location and watched as Glash backed in and parked next to a black panel van, the only other vehicle in the lot.
He stayed silent as Richard got out and reached under the van’s left front bumper. He heard the jangle of keys as he unlocked the driver’s side. Then Glash went to the back of the van, unlocked those doors and opened the trunk of the Passat.
Houssman watched through the rear-view mirror. It was difficult to see. The trunk door obscured most of what Glash was doing. H
oussman assumed that Glash had transferred Cosway to the back of the van when those doors slammed shut. Minutes passed. He could hear Glash doing something from inside the van. Then he reappeared, carrying what at first appeared to be Cosway’s unconscious body in a white shirt and slacks. Houssman strained for a better look and saw that the body had different hair from Cosway – it was red. But he could have sworn the clothes belonged to the Homeland agent. Glash crammed the body into the trunk of the Passat. He then yanked open the driver’s side door. He was lugging a second body – it reeked of death. This one was tall and dressed – exactly as Glash was – in khakis and a button-down shirt. The body had dark hair, but must have been dead a couple of days. Translucent yellow maggots had nested in the decaying flesh of his mouth, eyes and nose.
Houssman gagged, and nearly vomited. Glash came around to his side, opened the door and roughly lifted him out, then carried him into the back of the van. Continuing his dissertation on the reservoir, he dropped him next to Cosway’s naked body and proceeded to snip off his wrist restraints. ‘Sixty-four miles of highway had to be discontinued, and eleven miles of the Ulster and Delaware train track had to be rerouted …’ He yanked off George’s coat and told him, ‘Take off all of your clothes.’
Shocked, and overcome by the reek of death that permeated the van, Houssman couldn’t move.
Glash reached over to his one-time foster father and roughly undressed him. ‘Most of the displaced residents stayed in the area and established three new villages, West Hurley, Ashokan and Tongore.’ He then cinched on a fresh pair of wrist restraints and looked at Houssman. George shivered, as Glash gathered up his clothes. ‘Here,’ he said, and he pulled back a blue plastic tarp to reveal a tall woman’s dead and naked body. With an almost tender touch, Glash wrapped George in the crinkly tarp. ‘It should keep you warm,’ he said. He quickly dressed the woman in George’s clothes. When he’d finished he dragged her by the arms out of the van.
Gooseflesh popped on George’s arms and legs as he heard car doors opening and closing. He startled as Glash returned, reached into the back of the van and retrieved two five-gallon plastic gas cans. The doors slammed again, and over the smell of death came a strong odor of gas. George heard the liquid being poured out, more doors opening and closing …
Ashes, Ashes Page 15
